Related papers: Habitability in the Omega Centauri Cluster
The scientific interest in directly image and identifying Earth-like planets within the Habitable Zone (HZ) around nearby stars is driving the design of specialized direct imaging mission such as ACESAT, EXO-C, EXO-S and AFTA-C. The inner…
While the number of exoplanets discovered continues to increase at a rapid rate, we are still to discover any system that truly resembles the Solar system. Existing and near future surveys will likely continue this trend of rapid discovery.…
Roughly half of Solar-type planet hosts have stellar companions, so understanding how these binary companions affect the formation and evolution of planets is an important component to understanding planetary systems overall. Measuring the…
This review concentrates almost entirely on globular star clusters. It emphasises the increasing realisation that few of the traditional problems of star cluster astronomy can be studied in isolation: the influence of the Galaxy affects…
The notion of a Galactic Habitable Zone (GHZ), or regions of the Milky Way galaxy that preferentially maintain the conditions to sustain complex life, has recently gained attention due to the detection of numerous exoplanets and advances…
Most planetary systems -- including our own -- are born within stellar clusters, where interactions with neighboring stars can help shape the system architecture. This paper develops an orbit-averaged formalism to characterize the cluster's…
Revealing the mechanisms shaping the architecture of planetary systems is crucial for our understanding of their formation and evolution. In this context, it has been recently proposed that stellar clustering might be the key in shaping the…
The field of astrobiology has made huge strides in understanding the habitable zones around stars (Stellar Habitable Zones) where life can begin, sustain its existence and evolve into complex forms. A few studies have extended this idea by…
An analysis of the currently known exoplanets in the habitable zones (HZs) of their host stars is of interest in both the wake of the NASA Kepler mission and with prospects for expanding the known planet population through future ground-…
The dominant paradigm in assigning "habitability"' to terrestrial planets is to define a circumstellar habitable zone: the locus of orbital radii in which the planet is neither too hot nor too cold for life as we know it. One dimensional…
We summarize results of a search for X-ray-emitting binary stars in the massive globular cluster Omega Centauri (NGC 5139) using Chandra and HST. ACIS-I imaging reveals 180 X-ray sources, of which we estimate that 45-70 are associated with…
A planet's climate can be strongly affected by its orbital eccentricity and obliquity. Here we use a 1-dimensional energy balance model modified to include a simple runaway greenhouse (RGH) parameterization to explore the effects of these…
The frequency of Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of Sun-like stars, hereafter $\eta_\oplus$, is a key parameter to evaluate the yield of nearby Earth analogues that can be detected and characterized by future missions. Yet, this…
Among the most highly valued of exoplanetary discoveries are those of terrestrial planets found to reside within the Habitable Zone (HZ) of the host star. In particular, those HZ planets with relatively bright host stars will serve as…
The architecture of a planetary system can influence the habitability of a planet via orbital effects, particularly in the areas of stability and eccentricity. Some of these effects are readily apparent, particularly when they occur on…
A survey of currently known planet-hosting stars indicates that approximately 25% of extrasolar planetary systems are within dual-star environments. Several of these systems contain stellar companions on moderately close orbits, implying…
The spatial morphology and dynamical status of a young, still-forming stellar cluster provide valuable clues on the conditions during the star formation event and the processes that regulated it. We analyze the Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC),…
Terrestrial planets are more likely to be detected if they orbit M dwarfs due to the favorable planet/star size and mass ratios. However, M dwarf habitable zones are significantly closer to the star than the one around our Sun, which leads…
We revisit the problem of the split main sequence (MS) of the globular cluster omega Centauri, and report the results of two-epoch Hubble Space Telescope observations of an outer field, for which proper motions give us a pure sample of…
In the search for life beyond our Solar system, attention should be focused on those planets that have the potential to maintain habitable conditions over the prolonged periods of time needed for the emergence and expansion of life as we…